Sunday, September 07, 2008

Unspoken Agendas

Outwardly. the Republican National Convention, this week, was very boring to watch. While the various speakers infused their text with their own personalities, the real content was exactly the same. The same old conservative buzz words and phrases were all there. We heard the same exhortations to "Victory" in pursuit of the foreign wars of aggression. We heard about fiscal restraint in government. We heard about preserving cherished family values. Behind the podium the huge American flag rippled bravely, because we all know that only the Republican party embraces true love of country and patriotism and everyone else is at best misguided and most of the opposition leadership are, in fact, subversives who want nothing more than to destroy our country and way of life.

They never really said that though. They didn't really dwell on why we have the wars. They didn't really define what family values are and what it entails to live by them. They didn't outline how the Bush administration and Reagan administration fostered family values, fiscal conservatism and patriotism or how exactly the Clinton and Carter administrations did not. They talked about fighting corruption in government without pointing out that both Democrat and Republican Administrations are at least equally corrupt and that the same leaders who rail against the status quo, fiercely support it once in office.

I awaited, with interest, the speech by the Republican Vice Presidential selection. This person was picked almost solely on the basis that she supports the fundamentalist Christian political agenda. I thought perhaps here was the point where the goals and beliefs of these people would be laid out for us non believers. Outlawing abortion, when, where, how and what. Incorporating Christian beliefs in creationism, sexual mores, religion and ethnocentric xenophobia into the curriculum of public education. Recognition that America is a Judeo-Christian society by definition and any move toward secularism and inclusion of minority rights is seditious.

It never came. It never is going to come. The actual policies that would need to be implemented to bring about the kind of society that these people seek, do not have the kind of support necessary for their general acceptance and implementation and the fact is, there is no bar to the fundo community presently, from living exactly the way they want. There is only the opportunity for dissenters to live as they choose, as well, without impinging on the rights of others and that really doesn't play well.